Gaining Greater Testing Precision Through Adaptive Test Methods

Here are a few ways that I have found to be successful in incorporating adaptive testing methods to gain precision:   

1. Become self-adapting 
You can break out of the pre-defined test scope by creating versatility and flexibility in your testing suite. You can do this by engineering a flexible framework that allows unique combinations of small executable tests and grouping of test assets based on quality goals. This will provide the ability to re-integrate parts and pieces of stories (or test cases) into new, high-value runs. You can define the new executions by precise needs and execute them in combination or independently. The core principle here is the flexibility of test assets, which presents endless options for creative execution.

2. Define the Test Goals  
Most testing, whether agile or not, requires pre-planned executions which are largely categorized into either new change or regression testing of existing functionality. This traditional separation of test effort hinders the creative blending of testing types and methods. With adaptive methods, you can drive the testing based on the goals, regardless of whether it is new change or existing change. By combining meaningful tests together into a logical flow of quality-based goals you can accomplish testing of the new delta along with additional “regression” coverage under the theme of the test goal. Commonly used goals are usability, integration and interoperability, user and data security, data accuracy, and brand testing.

3. Data Driven Adaptation
You should support your test selections with data and analytics of past run metrics, user analytics, and test failure analysis. This will allow for the team to clearly see testing needs and define test goals. For example, user analytics reveal that 60 percent of your customers used a tablet device to access your site, and 40 percent of the existing customers use mobile devices to post product opinions on social media. This data tells you that the tablet presentation (usability and branding) will be important to test and the ease of launching to social media from a mobile phone (interoperability and performance) should also be precisely targeted by combining tests that focus on these areas.

4. Evergreen Maintenance
Continuous integration of the testing baseline is best for adaptive testing, because you can rely on your test execution selections for being relevant and not outdated. You don’t want several generations of automation or old test cases hanging around that can be inadvertently selected or rendered inefficient by not being execution ready. Ongoing fluid development, testing, and test baseline integration (of retrospective feedback, production fixes, planned change, etc.) will decrease the need for large maintenance windows and provide a foundation of continuous testing. 

5. Extend testing to production and beyond
Testing based on adaptive goals is valuable across the entire life cycle and lifespan, however, the biggest benefit can be seen during production. The results of early-cycle, pre-production testing can lead to a high-performing live product. The product owners will thank you because you are assisting them with customer retention, and technology staff will thank you for providing aid in an accelerated discovery, fix, and deploy cycle.

6. Monitor and measure 
You should measure test velocity and precision by capturing test execution metrics and comparing them to the test goals and the defect types. Production monitoring and issue resolution should be fed into the test baseline and utilized as a production quality metric; this can be used to identify potential areas of risk and aid with test selection. Common metrics that indicate quality and health include the number and criticality of defect hotspots, the time between defect identification to recovery time, and the time between test execution to test goal comparisons.  

The simple truth
Adaptive test methods create fluid and continuous testing, which in turn provide a force of adaptive patterns and relevant results. Testing can no longer be defined by an inflexible, unchangeable, one- toned function of test execution. What was once called regression, performance, or security tests are now combined needs that can be incorporated into a standard testing process.

This method serves best when done in a lightweight and self-adapting way. Adaptive testing provides nimble test solutions that bend and shift with the changing needs of the market or the environment.